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A friend said that gospel music was soul music for black folk and that mainstream soul music was music made for a white audience. The implication being that if you wanted to hear music with real soul, listen to gospel.

Generally speaking, gospel reflected whatever musical trend was happening in R&B music. Gospel music was a little rougher and less polished than secular music, and of course the theme was religious, but otherwise it was relatively easy for artists to cross back and forth between the two styles. And besides, most black pop and soul artists grew up singing in the church.

It’s not easy being a gospel record collector on the West Coast. Most of the congregations that bought these records and the record labels themselves were on the East Coast, the South, or in the industrial Midwest cities. The bad news is that out here we don’t see these records very often. The good news is that very few people collect gospel so when a load shows up somewhere it might stick around for a while and you have a shot at getting some of it.